Friday, November 9, 2007

The Big Dig

There is nothing like the destruction and dismantling of nice pristine forest land. All you gotta do is just bring in a backhoe and it is amazing what can be accomplished in one weekend. Andy's brothers and I started the Big Dig last weekend in the remote mountain setting at 4400 feet above see level.

We dug the trenches for the footers in the first steps to getting the cabin up. Luckily no one was killed or hurt, but we did have a few close calls. We all came out alive and unscathed except for the hatchback in one of our vehicles that was mistakenly backed into a tree.

We'll take the winter off and resume next spring with the project. Next is pouring the concrete and laying the brick foundation. How to get all the materials into this remote land?

A couple hunting dogs, chasing bear and boar, visited our camp on Saturday AM. They were hungry and we had a bag of powdered donuts that none of us were going to eat. So, why waste them. The male dog about ate the entire bag. Nice dogs. They didn't want to leave until the neighbors showed up and put them in the back of their truck.

Ahhhhhh, yes. There is nothing like a long view with a backhoe in the scene. But just wait until the cabin is up. We'll be sipping hot coffee off the back deck this time next year. That is the plan anyway.
And if you keep your eyes open, you'll be surprised at what you may find. I found this nice flint arrow head just after I found another one of quartz that had its tip missing. So, to date we've found 3 in the same place. After some initial research of Bill Oliver's web site and some people who say they know some things about arrowheads, it is believe that this is from the archaic period of human history 6000 to 7000 years ago. I figured at first is was maybe 1000 years old at most.

So, the funny thing about this weekend was that most of us were wearing sweaters to do the big dig. When the locals show up to check in on us, they must think "those city boys" all dapper are going to dig a big hole in the ground. I think we all had steel toe boots on though. I have those from my off-shore seismic days. Hey....looky here, a picture of me! Valdi snapped this shot.

1 comment:

Angus and the Triplets said...

I am SO impressed with that arrow head! Wow. Makes me think it would be fun to sift through all of the dirt by hand in search of more buried treasures. What a find!